The first thing you notice about the city is the lack of high rise buildings, many tourists some with American accents which I haven’t heard since Manila though the majority sound like East Europeans. Many of the businesses are run by East Europeans as well, strange when you are expecting to hear an Irish accent hahaha.

Tourism is big and well organised, the people are helpful, courteous and efficient and they have a brochure or map for every activity. There are a number of very good museums and admission is free.

Tip – If you go on the Trinity College tour which includes entry to view the Book of Kells do it at 4pm when you can walk straight in, in the morning the queue is a mile long and all to peer over someones shoulder at a book under glass, totally underwhelming.

With President Obama attending the G8 meeting in Northern Ireland, his wife and kids decided to visit Dublin, so for three days the roads around their hotel which is in the heart of town were surrounded with barricades and it was on the Hop on-off bus route which took an extra half an hour or more to do the loop around the city.